Job Description

This post is an exciting opportunity to be part of the team undertaking a new study to co-produce recommended activities with service users and staff that will promote health, recovery and wellbeing for people living with psychosis on and beyond acute mental health wards. By seeing what makes activities desirable and accessible, we can understand how to improve the experiences of service users on wards. This is a new area of research that will inform practice and the development of larger research grants and high impact research outputs.

The postholder will work in a team to conduct semi-structured interviews with a range of stakeholders including service users, ward staff, senior managers and community partners. The post will also involve conducting observations on acute inpatient mental health wards.

The post-holder will be responsible for the recruitment of participants and conducting observations and interviews with service users and staff on mental health inpatient wards across three hospital sites within South London and Maudsley Trust. The post holder will contribute to the analysis, write-up and dissemination of results, including academic papers, and developing future research proposals.

This post will be offered on an a fixed-term contract until February 2024.

This is a full-time post - 100% full time equivalent

Key responsibilities

• Coordinate delivery of the project objectives and facilitate effective communication and collaboration between stakeholders.
• Implement recruitment of staff working on and service users who are or have been a patient on a range of acute mental health inpatient wards for adults of a working age (18+) for interviews.
• Conduct semi-structured interviews to explore participants’ perspectives on activities on inpatient wards.
• Conduct observations on acute inpatient mental health wards at a range of days and times of the week.
• Establish and maintain good working relationships with multiple stakeholders.
• Conduct qualitative and quantitative analysis and assist in the interpretation of results.
• Assist and/or lead writing up of project reports and papers for publication in collaboration with other team members.
• Present project progress and results at internal/external meetings/seminars/conferences.
• Ensure project documentation is organised and maintained to a good standard.
• Ensure ethics and governance standards are adhered to.

Communication & Networking:

• Communicate and collaborative effectively with team members and stakeholders.
• Establish and maintain good working relationships with clinical services.
• Collaborate with others in writing for publication.
• Present to a wide range of audiences at seminars, conferences and meetings.
• Be alert to the needs of service users and sensitive working within mental health settings.

Decision Making, Planning and Problem Solving: 

• Contribute to the planning of research proposals and papers for publication.
• Contribute to collaborative decision making with colleagues.
• Prioritise and manage own workload to meet deadlines.
• Attend and contribute to departmental meetings and seminars.

Team Work: 

• Form excellent working relations with stakeholders and colleagues at all levels.
• Collaborate with team members on data analysis and writing for publication.
• Attend and contribute to team meetings.
• Actively participate as a member of the department, undertaking general tasks to support team activities.

The above list of responsibilities may not be exhaustive, and the post holder will be required to undertake such tasks and responsibilities as may reasonably be expected within the scope and grading of the post.

Skills, knowledge, and experience

Essential criteria

1. First degree in relevant discipline, i.e. nursing, psychology or social science (Application)

2. Strong skills in qualitative research methods (Application)

3. Undertaking research and/or working in relevant clinical environments and an understanding of the issues faced caring for service users/patients with complex health and social care needs.  (Application)

4. Experience of participant recruitment  (Application)

5. Experience of consulting and collaborating with mental health service users, and ideally of co-producing research.  (Application)

6. Ability to confidently use MS Excel, MS Word, SPSS and QSR NVivo, and willing to learn other software tools as required.

7. Ability to use your initiative, and work independently under your own direction.

8. Have a co-operative working style and be able to work assertively and with sensitivity.

9. Excellent communication and social/interpersonal skills and the ability to engage with busy clinicians and service users.

10. Willingness to undertake flexible working hours, including occasional evenings and weekends to conduct observations.

11. Able and willing to travel as required.

Desirable criteria

1. MSc in a health-related subject.

2. Have been involved in writing research reports and/or peer reviewed publications.

3. A good understanding of the ethical and research governance requirements for health services research.

We strongly encourage those with clinical and/ or lived experience of inpatient mental health settings, and those from BAME backgrounds to apply to this role.

Further information

Interviews will be held on Thursday 19th January 2023.